Nuggets guard played well down the stretch of the season in Denver. He’s an unrestricted free agent this summer. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Forgive D.J. Augustin if he doesn’t exactly jump for joy each time he hears a team say its interested in retaining his services. He’s been there before. Many times before.

“This is my fourth summer being a free agent,” Augustin told The Post. “You never know what can happen. I’ve been promised things in the past, and it didn’t come true. I’ve had my hopes up in the past and it things didn’t happen.”

The point guard is an unrestricted free agent this summer, and the Nuggets have said they’d like to talk to him about a possible return. He played well after coming to the team in a deal that sent Randy Foye to Oklahoma City at the trade deadline.

In 27 games with the Nuggets, Augustin averaged 11.7 points and nearly tied for the team lead in assists with 4.7 per game — just a hair off of Emmanuel Mudiay’s 4.9 in that span.

But his best contribution to the Nuggets was shooting. Augustin hit 40 percent of his 3-pointers, which ranked second only to Darrell Arthur among players that played 10 or more games in that span.

Whether that earns an encore presentation with the Nuggets remains to be seen.

“It’s just all about putting things in God’s hands and my agent’s hands and I’m going to just relax,” Augustin said. “My wife is having our third child. So I’m going to just see what happens. Anything can happen. I love it here, and hopefully things work out.”

The situation in Denver is complicated. Augustin took over for an injured Jameer Nelson and played so well that he earned a permanent spot in the rotation. Nelson, who signed a three-year contract with the Nuggets last summer, expects to return fully healthy next season.

Whether he returns to Denver or not, the opportunity to play and showcase himself was invaluable. And Augustin took full advantage of it.

“I was in a tough situation in Oklahoma,” Augustin said. “Like I told a lot of people, it wasn’t working out there. I did the right thing, my agent did the right thing and talked to those guys and they were kind enough to trade me, trade me to a good situation. Everything worked out.”

And his advice to young players?

“It’s a business,” he said. “No hard feelings. You’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do as a player. You’ve got to think about yourself sometimes and anything can happen. The NBA, they don’t really care about us; we have families and moving around and stuff, it’s a business, it’s a job. You’ve just got to be prepared for those things. This is the life we chose.”

Follow Chris Dempsey on Twitter @dempseypost or email him at cdempsey@denverpost.com

Augustin can’t stop anybody. Poor defensive player like most everyone on the Nuggets roster. I feel bad that he hasn’t found a home in the NBA. He’s an extreme example of a journeyman that changes teams every few months or year but, compared to Mudiay or Nelson’s flailing, seemed solid. I have more interest in commenting on Dempsey’s comments on Jokic. Disappointing article. I felt like Dempsey buried the lead like he so often does. Jokic had a truly great year. No need to make him seem like a country bumpkin from Eastern Europe that just wants to please his master. That’s how Lap Dog’s take came across to me. Maybe natural that a true Lap Dog wants to paint someone else the same way. As for Dempsey’s new found love of advanced stats–maybe he can convince the Nuggets to start paying more attention–he obscured the main stuff by overdoing it. Here’s the main thing. Jokic was top ten in real plus minus, meaning he was one of the top ten players in the league in helping his team when he was on the court. Yeah, of course he needs to beef up and get stronger and won’t be a really effective long term player if he doesn’t, but he really gets the game unlike most of the cannon fodder on this roster. Comic Boy JAX and some other dude from Boulder wasted our time with pleas to take a Jokic Faried or Jokic Nurkic combo seriously in the above ground thread. Please.Unbelievable. Once again, Nuggets fans get exactly what they deserve.

wordcat

More on Dempsey’s post season takes on the Nuggets roster. The article on Miller isn’t relevant except that’s he’s a guy that should leave the league as a player. By all means, make him a shooting coach and a mentor to players. Arthur is something completely different on the current Nuggets roster. A journeyman with good advanced stats even though he’s constantly injured. Tantalizing, I guess, for the Nuggets FO when you’re trying to keep your head above water. By a variety of advanced stats Arthur is in the top 30% of the league defensively and can actually make a shot from the perimeter, the rarest gift among the current Nuggets roster. I have to admit I’ve been harder on Arthur than I should have been because I frankly didn’t bother to do my due diligence in his case. As for ‘rewarding loyalty,’ well, I’d just say loyalty is one of the least of the virtues in a market economy. I’d guess Arthur knows pretty well at this point–especially given his limitations as a player and his injury history–where he can get his bread buttered most readily. I guess that passes for loyalty in the current NBA.

wordcat

About time to create some more space here in the underground? Re the piece on Barton, yes to all that. I can think of very few things the Nuggets FO has done well over the past three years. Barton is one of them. In some ways he came here years too late–he would have been perfect in a truly up tempo system. A nice find for sure. Still, he’s a terrible defensive player. Bottom 25% of the league, like pretty much everybody else on the roster. Appreciated Dempey’s take that a really bad defensive team–especially when you have the worst defensive starting back court in the league –can make players like Barton seem even worse defensively than they are. I keep coming back to this topic during this extended autopsy, but the Nuggets only clear direction, at least according to management, is to become a strong defensive team. They originally hired Shaw because he had a reputation as a players coach and came from–at the time–defensively oriented Indiana. They hired Malone, again, because he was a defensive minded coach that helped turn the Warriors into a very strong defensive team. Yet they’ve given those two coaches rosters that are full of really poor defenders.

wordcat

Blog here drying up as the season ends. Sad that there is so little interest in the Nuggets in town that Dempsey doesn’t even attempt to talk about possible draft scenarios, free agents, etc. Pathetic for sure. Incredible to me that he has so little to write about that takes time on Hack a Shaq strategies in this year’s playoffs. Really, that’s the best you can do as the house writer for the Post re the Nuggets. Re his take on Hack a Shaq, I’m puzzled why any intelligent person feels it’s important to keep really big guys that have very limited skills in the game. I understand why when the hoop was a peach basket and nobody had ever played the game before and that ten foot goal looked so very high that people got really sold out for the idea that ‘bigger is better.’ I also get it that some of the greatest moments of NBA hoops over the decades involved very large people with limited skills and in a few cases, like Kareem, very large people with fine skills, so nostalgia plays a role, as I think it does mainly for Dempsey. I don’t think the hoops world has ever broken out of that primitive and understandable mindset though it’s changing–wonderfully in my opinion–little by little. D’Antoni at one point rejected the pejorative ‘small ball’ label that the nostalgic want to place on what’s happening in the NBA and argued it should be replaced with ‘skill ball.’ Exactly. If 7 footers are very skilled, they fit now. Kareem and some other big guys from the past could play today. Big guys that don’t develop real skills should be run out of the league as soon as possible. At the very least, keep the rules the same and allow Hack a Shaq to continue and intensify. At the best, change the rules so Hack a Shaq will become even more prevalent. Some ugly hoops to come in the short run, for sure, but best in the long term for the league. I’d far rather watch a bunch of great athletes with real basketball skills compete against each other than ‘big men’ that can’t make a free throw or do other basic skills other than ‘taking up space and protecting the rim’

Chris Dempsey arrived at The Denver Post in Dec. 2003 after seven years at the Boulder Daily Camera, where he primarily covered the University of Colorado football and men's basketball teams. A University of Colorado-Boulder alumnus, Dempsey covers the Nuggets and also chips in on college sports.